Friendfactor Is Blowing Up State Senators’ Phones With Calls for Gay Marriage

How do you legalize gay marriage in the age of social media? Peer pressure! Friendfactor, the app that generates individualized campaign pages for gay marriage, is converting every gay New Yorker who signs up into four phone calls to a state senator.

Brian Elliot created a Facebook page to lobby his friends to stand up for marriage equality–not for a faceless statistic of however many loving gay couples in however many states across the union–but for just himself, a dude people knew, who would like to maybe marry another dude he loved very much. He called it “Give Brian Equality.” He got 19,000 fans.

The Facebook page evolved into Friendfactor, a nonprofit whose board includes Facebook and Jumo co-founder Chris Hughes, which just launched in New York in advance of the June 20th vote that could legalize gay marriage in the state. Using Friendfactor.org, gays create a web page that asks friends to call in on their behalf. The pages include a goal for the number of phone calls, a spot to upload a video appeal, and an easy click to connect the call to the state senator from their district, plus the requisite share buttons to spread the personal appeal around.

Chelsea Handler, Senator Kirstin Gillibrand, Christine Quinn and Sarah Silverman have all made campaign pages. So Mr. Hughes, when is New York-native Mark Zuckerberg going to jump in on this?

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